The Healing

Finished April 27

The Healing by Lynda Faye Schmidt

This novel draws from the author's real life experiences, featuring the fictional character Cate Henderson, starting just as she's leaving her abusive husband and starting a new life. She leaves Calgary and stays for a few months in her daughter's home on Vancouver Island while her daughter and son-in-law are overseas. While there, she focuses on her own mental and physical health and finds herself drawn to a man visiting family. While Cate cares strongly about all three of her children, they are now adults and have their own lives. Celeste is settled in B.C. with her husband. Dana is still living a life of exploration and adventure, and Taylor is starting university. 

The new man in Cate's life has her moving to parts of the world she never considered before, and adds another adult child to her life. 

This is a book that explores mental health challenges, physical health challenges, and the risks and rewards of new relationships and new places to live. It is the story of a woman starting a new period of her life, focusing on her own health and her own needs for really the first time in her life.

That is not to say that she doesn't respond to the needs of her children, but that she achieves a balance to her life that she hasn't had before.

This is a novel of hope.